Loving Hands - a faithful crew of knitters!

Loving Hands knits, crochets and sews for charity and have been supporting Operation Orphan since we met Cyrilyn last year where she explained how the charity works.

We have group meetings all over the UK and although I live in Nottinghamshire my nearest meeting was at Stafford when I first attended 2 1/2 years ago, then the group was just 4 people including me, we now get at least a dozen people once a month. We made Operation Orphan one of our main charities as it is always good to support local causes, and I could drop items in to The Big Yellow when I was passing.

Word soon got out and each month I would have maybe 3 or 4 large bags full of hand made items – jumpers, scarves, hats, gloves, anything that our members enjoyed making and that would benefit people who needed them to keep warm.

Then we started talking on our online forum about the Syrian Refugees appeal by Operation Orphan and things soon started to escalate – as the local member I volunteered to take delivery of boxes from Loving Hands members and groups. These came from as far away as the Shetland Islands and France as well as all over mainland UK. Twice I folded my back seats down and made my car into a van and loaded it up to the roof, as well as the front passenger seat and foot-well and brought everything to the storage place, both times one of the huge trolleys was filled to overflowing.

I cannot craft myself at the moment as I have a problem with my left shoulder, but I can do my bit by fetching, carrying and delivering. Once the Syrian appeal has finished we won’t be stopping, there will still be lots of knitted, sewn and crocheted items made and delivered regularly.